Pansy 01 – 58 hours in

Well, I am very happy with the results of my first tapestry design. It’s taken me longer than I expected, but I think that’s partially because I haven’t been able to dedicate large blocks of time to working on the sewing. There are a few areas that need to be fixed up, where the yarn got a bit thin, but otherwise I see potential.

I think that I have about 10-15 more hours to complete the sewing and then will need to decide whether to add a few rows at the top to cover the exposed petal of the pansy. I don’t think the design needs a border as that will clutter the intricacy of the actual design.

I’m already designing my next version of the pansy. But more on that later!

Pansy 01 – 41 hours into sewing

I am quite pleased with how the pansy is coming along. Although the pattern itself is smaller than I’d ultimately like it to be, it looks very good. My stitching is fairly even and the back is good. There have been more mistakes along the way. And, I reiterate, I would love to have more time to work on it. Though, now, I have actually come up with the plan not to watch any TV or Netflix during the week, which should be give me at least an hour more each night. I’d say the pansy is about 1/2 of the way to complete. I already know how I’m going to change it for the next iteration. Current audio book is 22 Britannia Road.

Pansy 01 – One month on

It’s been just over a month, and so far I’ve been able to allocate about 10 hours of sewing time to my pansy. There have been a few missteps along the way, such as:

1. miscounting stitches and needing to add many more stitches due to my miscount,
2. not buying enough skeins in the background color even though the pattern stated the number of yards, and I had help at the store determining how many skeins that should have translated into,
3. leaving long bits of yarn hanging on the back of the canvas, which got entangled with the yarn I was actually trying to sew with,
4. more miscounting, so that whole rows of stitches were in the wrong place, and
5. not thinking through how I would mark out which stitches I’d completed on the pattern – when there are more than 20 colors in the pattern and a symbol being used for each color, I’ve discovered a highlighter is the best way to mark out which stitches have been completed.

I think overall, the pattern is turning out very well. I’ve just moved on to a very red color, when I’d mostly been using derivations of purple and gray, and I was a bit worried about the red fitting into the scheme. So far, so good. It doesn’t show in this picture, as the picture was taken before I introduced the red. In fact, this picture looks quite nondescript; the outline of the top of the pansy is about all that can be made out.

What I really need is more time to work on the tapestry.

As I work on my tapestries, I am listening to books on CD. It is very relaxing. I completed a Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway, this morning. And I am now listing to Eckart Tolle and a talk he gave at Findhorn. Quite funny in places. Onward!

The Beginning – Pansy 01

The beginning has been a long time coming. I started working with yarn when I was quite small. My grandmother taught me to knit and I moved on to shag rug projects, yarn games, and eventually tapestries. So I’ve had a relationship with this textile most of my life and I am at a point where I am intrigued by whether I can make my own designs – for a long I’ve altered patterns to make them what I want but never actually designed something from start to finish.

So for months, I have been preparing my own designs. I began by thinking through the process. Many tapestry designs are painted or screen printed onto the canvas but I don’t paint or know how to screen print, so I needed to find another way to make my design something I could work from. I bought sketch paper, colored pencils, graph paper, software and began thinking about what my subject might be and how to set some parameters around my time and commitment to the design process. (I work full time).

I travel as much as I can, so I thought about the kinds of photos I tend to take when I travel. What catches my attention? Well, mostly flowers, colors, patterns and shapes. So, I decided my first collection would be much like a fashion collection. I would pick 12 designs and attempt to complete 12 individual tapestries by the end of next year. Yes, I did get this idea from Project Runway. Like in a runway show, I want my designs to tell a story and to have continuity, but I also want them to stand as pieces on their own.

On a recent trip to Victoria, Canada, I collected many wonderful photos of flowers: begonias, fuchsias, pansies, and many that I cannot identify…. I began with the fuchsia, and thought that I would find some kind of interesting background to set as the backdrop and so I drew a fairly good picture of the , at least in my mind and tried to use a technique that I’d seen for stained glass as the background.

The fuchsia I drew

But that didn’t really work. The fuchsia in any event, is a very complicated flower, because of the numerous petals at different angles. I worked on it a bit more, but decided that it would be a better project to work on after I’ve gained a bit more skill and confidence.

I thought a pansy might be easier. Not so much. I have been able to get the pansy to a working level.

Photo of my pansy

So I am now sewing the first of my designs. This Pansy has approximately 37 different colored yarns and the final design will measure about 8.5 x 9 inches. I chose to do a small version as a first run, just so I could get through the sewing more quickly to gauge whether I’m on to something. We’ll see how it goes. More to follow.